


Pink Rain

by charmquark



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, F/M, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 10:52:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2307044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charmquark/pseuds/charmquark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grief is like being scraped empty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pink Rain

**Author's Note:**

> (Written 08/2010)
> 
> Done for [](http://naruto-meme.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://naruto-meme.livejournal.com/)**naruto_meme** 's Scream Meme. Prompt was: _Some angst and screaming issues when someone from Team 7 finds someone from the team presumably dead._

It feels, Naruto thinks, rather like being hollowed out, like cutting a hole in a gourd to remove the seeds, spoon scraping against the interior wall (his ribs, spine) with a morbid sound and meat (his guts) lying wet and visceral on the table.

It's such a horrid feeling that he doesn't even notice the way his throat tears as he shouts his grief, nor the way his eyes burn and his head aches from crying. He's just emptying himself, after all, emptying everything because he's so full and it hurts so much, he can't fucking stand it. Can't take being so full of energy and the demon and life when she — 

_isn't_

— ejects that thought forcibly, like throwing something against a wall. It would feel good to do that, he thinks, in a haze of misery.

"Fuck," he intones. "Fuck fuck fuck fuck _fuck_." Maybe if he swears enough some deity will be offended enough to take notice.

But there's no deity, just Kakashi standing like a white specter behind him. "Naruto."

"Shut the fuck up," Naruto snarls, his voice hoarse; it cracks on the last word. "She isn't dead."

He maintains this line whenever anyone tries to talk to him about it, wears it across his forehead in cloth and metal and an etched leaf at her memorial service, no matter how improper it is. _Screw proper_ , he thinks, defiant against others' defeat. There's no body to inter, and this is the bright fact he holds in front of himself to ward off the pessimism.

Just because she was in the area when the trap went off...

Explosives experts call it "pink rain," and the phrase invokes images that echo in his skull, rattling brittle bones slipping under his defenses, until he tries to slam the door shut on them. Tries to picture the color of her hair, to remember Tanabata last year, when he tasted clear rain off her mouth for the first time and the taste of her mouth, too, was a first. He'd been so stunned he forgot to think it ironic that their bridges — built out of years and persistence and sheer luck (he's pretty sure) — should be crossed when the magpies wouldn't come for Orihime, not that year.

Naruto tries to crowd the violence out. It very nearly works.

The denial, people tell him, isn't healthy, but he doesn't see how it's harmful. He's already been scraped dry and empty; he cannot possibly get any _worse_.


End file.
